Kokuri Baba (Temple Kitchen Hag)（KOH-koo-ree bah-BAH）
Kokuri Baba (Temple Kitchen Hag)
KOH-koo-ree bah-BAH
Kokuri Baba (Temple Kitchen Hag)
KOH-koo-ree bah-BAH
Basic Description
An old-woman yokai illustrated by Edo-period artist Toriyama Sekien in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi. Said to haunt a temple’s kuri (monastic kitchen/quarters), she steals offerings and money from parishioners, desecrates graves to weave garments from the dead’s hair, flays skin, and eats corpses. In Sekien’s image she appears as an elderly woman spinning thread with a cat at her side, often read as satire on clerical corruption and decaying temple morals. Reliable region-specific oral traditions are uncertain.
Folklore & Legends
Sekien’s image and notes are the main sources: an old woman dwelling in a temple kuri who pilfers offerings and ravages graveyards. Later modern ghost-story collections repeat this depiction, adding retellings such as a Yamagata tale of a woman who eats the dead and cannot find repose, or a yokai that devours temple residents. These versions derive from later introductions; solid evidence for medieval or early modern local traditions is thin, and creative embellishment is likely.
An interpretation grounded in Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku Hyakki Shūi depiction. Said to be the transformed bōnsō of the seventh prior abbot haunting the temple kitchen quarters, it steals offerings and money, digs up graves to braid hair into garments, and eats human flesh. Artwork pairs an old woman twisting thread with a cat, suggesting satire of clerical corruption and monastic lapses. The name “Kokuri” may pun on a word for something terrifying. Lacking a fixed regional distribution, it is chiefly known as a bookborne pictorial yokai. Rather than field sightings, it likely served as a moral warning and social satire aimed at temple society.
Character Profile
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
The diagram below is a diagnostic evaluation chart for Sekien Iconography Version. The higher the value of each item, the stronger that characteristic is expressed.
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